Can an HP Pavilion be upgraded

My father in law gave my wife his old HP Pavilion 8380, which has a PII 400. It has a lot of good features built in but it is slooooow. I can upgrade the memory from 96 Meg to 384 Meg with Crucial memory, but I'm afraid it still will be slow. Has anyone put in a new mobo into one of these proprietary machines? If I do, can the DVD drive and CR writer be made to work. I know I'll lose the features built into the mobo.

By the way, I can upgrade the CPU from 400 to 450, so that's not an option.

is pavillion a notebook (cuz i dont know) if its a desktop you might aswell buy a new motherboard and processor (get em well cheap) BTW what ram you got is it EDO cuz edo dont really cut the cheese now so no new motherboard use it

Yes you can upgrade the motherboard on that model, it may be a little tricky however based on the chassis style so you will need to do some searching for compatible sized motherboard, as I don't know if this system used the piglet style case or standard mid-tower, if it's really small you'll need a baby atx mobo for it.

Thanks for your replies. This desktop uses PC100 memory. That's why I don't want to buy any more. I did some investigation and I think it an Asus P2B98-XV board. The Asus website doesn't list the mobo since its an HP, but I think it's an ATX form factor. I guess I need to look at where the various holes on the back of the case are and match them to a new mobo.

There's a PC show next weekend and I guess I'll do some investigation and figure out what will fit.

With a new mobo, will I have any compatability problems with the other HP drives, especially the CD burner and DVD?